Dr. J.P. (Jack) London, CACI Chairman, President and CEO

It is an honor to help host this event. So much of what we do at CACI is in support of our nation's military, as well as many other agencies and departments of the federal government.

As a result, we're keenly aware of what it means to serve - indeed, many of our employees are veterans themselves - and that makes us even more proud to serve. And we should acknowledge at the outset two people who have also performed an extraordinary service, Taylor Baldwin Kiland and Jamie Howren Quinn. Thirty years after these POWs came home Taylor and Jamie have helped their stories come home with thousands of Americans. So thanks to you both.

And thanks also to our panelists: Ev Alvarez, Phyllis Galanti, Doris Day, Dr. Bob Hain, Dr. Hal Kushner, Orson Swindle and Dr. Bob Ursano, as well as our moderator, Joe Galloway. We're all looking forward to your discussion.

In your programs tonight is a quote from Cicero, the Roman orator. He says: "Freedom suppressed and again regained, bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered." A powerful but complex expression. After all, his language is quite unusual. How is it that "freedom" "bites with keener fangs"? But they say... just ask anyone who has experienced the sharp shock of sudden freedom regained - the sudden reminder of just how much they have endured, and how much they went without.

Consider, then, what you see in this extraordinary exhibition. No fangs, but, yes, many teeth, all laid bare by one smile after another. I think that was what moved me most about this exhibition: those smiles. Men who had spent years of their lives in the most degrading conditions imaginable, now find themselves captured once more - but this time on film - and they choose to smile.

It is a choice, that smile. Just as it was, decades before, a choice to serve, a choice to survive... a choice to prevail! As Cicero reminds us, that that first bite of sudden freedom regained can, in its own way, be painful. But it is also tenacious. We know that men who taste freedom once more do not let go. Let all of us not let go, either. Not of the memories of those men who served, and survived, and prevailed... with honor. Nor of the cause of freedom that they fought for, and so many of their companions, died for, long ago.

Indeed, let us all pledge ourselves to safeguard the freedom that they regained and to work toward an age where those people around the world who still suffer in their own prisoner's chains may one day know freedom's glorious bite.